


you set me on fire (i've never felt so alive)

by abyssith



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, Heavy Angst, M/M, No Fluff, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Sickness, The Death Cure, minor language, this is rEALLY fuckin sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13205256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssith/pseuds/abyssith
Summary: Oh, how wonderful it feels to be on fire. How tempting it is to lose control, surrender the reins of his soul to the demon promising to treat him well. How he wishes he could rip out this love still refusing to give up its place in his heart so he doesn’t have to fight anymore.





	you set me on fire (i've never felt so alive)

**Author's Note:**

> title from Battle Scars by Lupe Fiasco and Guy Sebastian

At first, he doesn’t hear that damned man pronounce his fate because of the tingling inside of him. Like a million tiny bugs are crawling underneath his skin, setting each and every nerve ablaze. The only thing that clues him in is Tommy’s face that suddenly goes ghost-white, which alarms him to the point that he forces his head back into the present. Lucky for him there is still an echo bouncing through his ears. 

_Newt_

_Newt_

_Newt_

_Newt_

And then his mind catches up to the rest of his body and realization clicks. His stomach plummets into his shoes and a terrible nausea takes its place. _Ah,_ he thinks, the little flames inside of him snuffing out all at once. A stinging cold moves in and fills his arms and legs and he cannot feel a thing. Frozen he sits, unmoving and refusing to look at anyone.

Then he has to, because he simply cannot take Tommy’s eyes misting over with tears that threatens to both set off a nuke in his chest and shatter whatever remains of his heart. The _passion_ and the _sorrow_ in his expression sends tendrils of unexplainable emotion curling around his chest, constricting and squeezing until Newt can’t breathe.

“Tommy,” he manages to squeak out. He realizes it was barely an inaudible gasp. He stands up and a little of the pressure on his lungs disappears. “Tommy,” Newt says, louder this time. Tommy is still staring at the floor, looking as if he had been shot point-blank. Some of the ice wedged in his ribs expands, cracking his bones, and the grin he drags onto his face for Tommy takes every ounce of strength left within him. “Slim yourself.”

Tommy looks up and Newt is immediately drawn to his eyes as if pulled by a magnet somewhere in that deep, suffocating brown. “Slim myself?” Tommy repeats incredulously; Newt hardly hears him. “That old shank just said you’re not immune to the Flare. How can you—”

“I’m not worried about the bloody Flare, man.” Newt spits the sentence out in a clipped, flat tone, hating the bitter taste of lies left on his tongue. “I never thought I’d still be alive at this buggin’ point—and living hasn’t exactly been so great anyway.” 

He has no idea what compelled him to add that second bit. It certainly was not intended to come out, though he was, admittedly, thinking it. It had more or less seen the open door and jumped out of his mouth, and Tommy’s face gets impossibly whiter. Had it not been for that burning itch distracting him, Newt figures he would be touched by the boy’s reaction. He watches Tommy try to smile, not for a second fooled by the fabricated grin he eventually pushes onto his face. Then again, Newt did exactly the same not ten seconds ago, so he forgives Tommy for his sorry attempt. 

It’s his next words that chill Newt to the core. “If you’re cool with slowly going crazy  and wanting to eat small children, then I guess we won’t cry for you.”

Newt’s smile falls from his face and he quietly relishes the feeling of a genuine frown as Tommy’s remark sinks in. It hurts, it hurts like he’s trying to swallow a jagged chicken bone, but he does it. “Good that,” he replies, and the hollow deadness resonating in his voice scares him enough to fall silent once again. His eyes never leave Tommy’s figure as the flames slowly return, one by one.

 

* * *

  

His body is constantly in a fever-like state every hour following the declaration, as if knowing the Flare is rooted and growing stems within him finally set it into full motion. Whenever Tommy is around, the fire threatens to consume him from the inside out. His fingers shake violently as he writes his note and shake even harder when he shoves it into Tommy’s hands. 

“What is it?” Tommy asks, and Newt wants to cry out because _why is he making this so hard_ it’s just a note _just put it away now now now_

“Just—” Newt breathes in shakily. “—put the bloody thing in your pocket. Now look me in the eyes.” He snaps his fingers and has to check twice because it felt like he just struck a match using his fingertips.

Tommy’s eyes hesitantly find his. “What is it?” he asks again, lower this time.

Newt struggles to stay calm, struggles to place his heart and his trust and his life in the fragile hands of his last living hope. “You don’t need to know,” he answers dismissively, breaking his gaze for a split second before leaping back to his safe haven. Tommy’s eyes are like a drug and Newt’s not sure how he can live without it. “You _can’t_ know. But you have to make me a promise—and I’m not messing around here.” His voice falls weak.

Tommy’s voice sounds light, a breeze that ruffles Newt’s hair and tickles his face with feathers. “What?” 

For a fleeting moment Newt sees his hands on Tommy’s face, pulling him in, and the mental recoil slaps him so hard he loses his breath. Already he is losing control of the simple emotions that made him human—but isn’t that the point of the Flare? To untie the knots holding you together, to slowly strip away your humanity until all that remains is a reduced version of the worst of you?

“You swear to me,” Newt says through his tightly clenched teeth, “that you won’t read what’s inside that bloody envelope until the time is right.”

The desire to tell Tommy exactly what it says grows into a living beast inside of him, trying to claw its way up his vocal chords and out his mouth in the form of _kill me, if you’ve ever been my friend just bloody kill me_ but Newt stays silent. Perhaps there’s a little wish for the coming pain hidden deep in the dark retreats of his body, because he knows that he risks a lifetime he’ll never know he’s living because he’ll be too busy howling at the agony in his head and boiling through his veins by giving Tommy this note. He may not even open it, may not see it until it’s much too late.

But he loves this boy. And the only thing Newt remembers about love is that you’re supposed to _trust_ , _trust_ because that’s the best gift you can possibly give.

Tommy looks confused and Newt gets ever more frustrated. “When the time is right? How will I—”

“You’ll bloody know!” Newt doesn’t scream, but the sharp edge he practically drives into Tommy’s gut makes it sound as if he did. “Now swear to me. Swear it!” A white-hot shudder races down his spine and he wonders if it’s possible for his body to melt into a human puddle. That would surely be less painful than this.

“Fine!” All of the worry and concern in the world is in this boy’s eyes now, and oh, if only Newt could see it. “I swear I won’t read it until the time is right. I swear. But why—”

“Okay, then,” Newt interrupts again. This time, his voice is soft, but it isn’t gentle. It’s the calm before the storm and he knows he has to leave before that storm hits again. “Break your promise and I’ll never forgive you.” 

Venom drips from his lips as Newt stares at Tommy, wondering how he must appear. Tommy stares back, unmoving and silent with shock written all over his face. Newt’s feet move on their own, leaving footprints outlined in flickering red flame trailing away from him.

 

* * *

  

Just as he smolders with the fire of a dying star when Tommy is near him, his whole body is engulfed with brutal ice when Tommy is gone. The frigid feeling had been gnawing at Newt since he had proposed he stay behind and no one—not even Tommy! _Tommy!_ —had argued. But it had developed into a full-blown blizzard after Tommy had hesitated in front of him before he left, as if he were going to give Newt a hug, and then simply said, “We’ll be back soon.”

“Bloody see to it,” Newt grumbled, stumbling over his own words.

Tommy had fixed him with a single mysterious gaze that Newt returned just as fiercely. When the four finally left, Newt was free to roam the Berg and freeze in his torment. He spent the first hour punching random walls and screaming, but he had enough sense to stay quiet enough so as to not alert people who may be passing by of his presence. And besides: the haunting echoes of his cries intrigued him, and he settled for listening to each of them bounce through the dark corridors of the ship before disappearing with a hush. After that, Newt pulled his feet through the icy lake that seemed to be filling the Berg to his knees into Tommy’s bunk, where he flung his body and promptly launched into a bout of loud sobs. He hugged the pillow to his chest and squeezed it, wishing with all his might that it was Tommy he was holding, smelling, kissing. The sheets he wrapped himself in were not nearly enough to fend off of the all-consuming chills wracking his thin, worn body.

That’s where the men with the harsh voices and the guns that wouldn’t leave his face find him. Newt can barely bargain for the time to leave a final goodbye, and his hand trembles so hard he nearly can't finish it. All of his important messages seem to be written on paper these days; he no longer has the voice nor the mental stability nor the time to say them out loud anymore. It's short, too short, and he means to say something to Tommy but the men pull at him before he can. So he signs it carelessly, thinking his name looks much too similar to a splatter of blood than an actual word, and lets himself be pulled away. And still the cold chases him.

 

* * *

 

It’s almost too much when he sees two familiar bodies out of the corner of his eye a few days after. He had gotten used to the crushing loneliness and the cruel, unpleasant voices of the Cranks loitering around him. He had almost accepted that this is his life now; that this was the fate the world had written for him.

Never before had Newt seen hope as a horrible thing before, but now he feels it. It’s even worse than the frost that he had thought permanently settled over him. It’s worse than the Flare seizing more and more of his brain each second, scorching every inch of what it touches and turning it into blackened ashes. The hope strikes him like a blow to the gut and Newt gasps, suddenly feeling each and every single individual heartbeat pounding in his ears. He can only hear his breaths shuddering in his lungs and he turns his back to the entrance, wide-eyed and terrified. He bites his lip hard enough that the taste of metal soaks his tongue. His white-knuckled fingers curl protectively around the Launcher in his hands and he has to tell himself he will not _shoot, don’t you bloody dare squeeze that trigger Newt_

He hears them get closer, he _feels_ it like their steps are his. Each inhale gets shallower and shallower until he can’t stay still any while longer. Newt shoots up and expels the emotions bubbling up in his body with a single exclamation: “I thought I told you bloody shanks to get lost!”

There’s a moment of silence, and Newt is tempted to look behind him. Yet he’s afraid to. But eventually he does because the sound of Minho’s voice brings him back to days he wishes he can remember and cherish and smile at. He sees the Asian boy for a second before that magnet beckons him again and guides his eyes up to Tommy’s, who gapes in astonishment. The image of him immediately sparks a chain reaction under Newt’s skin and that fucking fire is back. Blowing up inside of him like a furnace, compressing sheets of festering anger and betrayal into a dense ball of _anguish._

Tommy never says a word but doesn’t look away from him as Newt and Minho speak to each other. The other boy’s firm words of reason clash with Newt’s stubborn, sick resolve, and finally Newt loses enough composure that the Flare yanks him to his feet and sticks his arms out. It sets the huge gun against his shoulder and elbow, trained at Minho’s chest. “I _am_ a Crank, Minho!” he shouts. A lump boils in his throat and his voice only gets louder and louder with each word. “Why can’t you get that through your bloody head? If you had the Flare and knew what you were about to go through, would you want your friends to stand around and watch? Huh? Would you want that?”

And then he settles, just enough for him to finally address Tommy with his glare, words, and Launcher. Tommy stares down the weapon's barrel and peers into Newt’s eyes, pleading as Newt summons all of the poison coating his mouth and hisses, “And _you,_ Tommy. You’ve got a lot of bloody nerve coming here and asking me to leave with you. A lot of bloody nerve.

“The sight of you makes me sick.”

Oh, how wonderful it feels to be on fire. How tempting it is to lose control, surrender the reins of his soul to the demon promising to treat him well. How he wishes he could rip out this _love_ still refusing to give up its place in his heart so he doesn’t have to fight anymore.

“What are you talking about?” asks Tommy. He seems stunned, heavily wounded by what Newt had said.

Newt stares at him, breathing hard. When the flames die so does his anger, and all he feels is desperation. He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want to see them, to see _him._ It’s too much. “I’m sorry, guys,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry.But I need you to listen to me. I’m getting worse by the hour and I don’t have many sane ones left. Please leave.” He pushes all of the emotion he can into his last two words, hoping beyond hope that his former friends could see how badly he is faring.

He sees Tommy open his mouth, can almost hear what he’s about to say, and Newt scrambles to stop him before he can get hurt any more. “No!” he blurts. “No more talking from you. Just…” Newt sucks in a breath, wishing it didn’t leave such a sour tang in his mouth. “Please. Please leave. I’m begging you. I’m begging you to do this one thing for me. As sincerely as I’ve ever asked for anything in my life, I want you to do this for me.” He pauses, and hesitantly tells them about the group he found and that they’re going to Denver the following morning. The misery that steadily grows in Tommy’s eyes urges Newt to add, “It’s gonna be hard enough for me now, and it’ll make it worse if I know you have to witness it. Or worst of all, if I hurt…” He wants to say Tommy so bad but he can’t bring himself to single him out. “You. So let’s say our bloody goodbyes and then you can promise to remember me from the good old days.” 

_Don’t forget me_

All it takes is four words from Minho’s mouth to set Newt off again. “I can’t do that.”

Newt screams out and a wild red haze clouds his vision, and all he remembers is shouting at the people in front of him and fighting and Minho and Tommy and before he knows it he’s pulling the trigger of the Launcher. The force of the gun against his chest and the electricity that charges the air makes the hairs on the back of Newt’s neck stand straight up, and he stands there, staring at the writhing body on the ground. Slowly he looks back up at Tommy, and then Minho and Brenda and Jorge before Tommy again. 

“I told him to stop,” he whispered, in awe of the burst of adrenaline pumping through his limbs. He knows how dangerous it is, that it’s as if he’s holding a metal rod up to a storm to charge a computer, and it fills him with a sick thrill. Shivering, Newt brings the gun back to Minho, hoping maybe now they will understand his terror. “Now you guys leave. No more discussion. I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to shoot me? Old pal?” asks Minho.

Newt hears him just enough to get angry all over again. “Go. I asked nicely,” he insists, glancing at Tommy. The younger boy’s mouth is half open, and a fresh tear slips down his cheek. Newt’s own eyes burn with the sight. “Now I’m _telling_. This is hard enough. Go.” He can’t look at that picture of utter despair named Tommy anymore. 

“Newt, let’s go outside—”

“Go! Get out of here!” Newt yells, taking one menacing step forward and almost shoving the gun into Minho. The Flare is telling him to, coaxing him to, reminding him of everything bloody little thing Minho’s ever done to cause him harm. And it is so, so hard to keep his finger still. 

From his peripheral vision he sees Tommy gazing at him before mumbling, “Let’s go. Come on.”  


In that one moment Newt’s chest opens. The place where his heart should be is gone, empty, cold. He steps back, choking on the piercing grief overflowing through his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. Every word is a battle. Every syllable is a cauldron of molten rock poured down his throat. “I’m…I’m going to shoot if you don’t go. Now.”

Tommy doesn’t even look at him. He takes the girl’s hand, who has not said a single word this entire exchange

_he hates her, why didn’t he shoot her instead?_

and then pulls her out with Minho. Jorge looks at Newt before hastily following behind, but Newt has already dropped his gaze. When he can’t help but look back one more time, the four are almost at the exit already. He finds Tommy’s forlorn, drooping form and sends out a mental cry, focusing all of his sadness into it and longing for Tommy to hear him. But Tommy doesn’t hear it, doesn’t look back, leaves with everyone without a final glance. Newt sinks to the floor and sobs.

He’s so cold.

 

* * *

  

When the cars collide and sends the van careening towards the cement wall in the middle of the highway, Newt has a mind to dive into the fray and pray one of them hits him. The dust clears and he mourns his lost chance, getting ready to go back and join the rest of the Cranks whom had all already lost interest in the disturbance. It’s all he knows now—ice in his chest, an inferno in his head, blood caking his nails and skin and the Cranks that call him friend. But when Newt concentrates and looks through the broken glass, he remembers one more thing.

That boy with brown eyes. That boy he called Tommy.

He enters a trance, not noticing the voices inside the van and the boy getting out. A brief memory of a TV screen buzzing with static that electrified the glass surface and filled the room with white noise flashes through his mind. Reality fades in and out and Newt’s right eye twitches as his vision swims before him. Another memory steals Newt’s attention—this one is of him touching boiling water and yanking his hand out, too shocked to register pain because the water felt like it was freezing. The sensation he recalls spreads from his head and throughout his numb body, and through the chaos ripping his world into shreds he isn’t sure if he’s hot or cold anymore.

There’s that echo in his ears.

_Newt_

_Newt_

_Newt_

_Newt_

“Newt. It’s me, Thomas. You still remember me, right?”

His vision clears and sharpens, infusing his stomach with extreme vertigo. The numbness turns to a gradually warning heat. “I bloody remember you, Tommy,” Newt answers. He’s surprised by how rough his voice are; he has not used it in what feels like forever. “You just came to see me at the Palace, rubbed it in that you ignored my note. I can’t go completely crazy in a few days.” He would surely be proud of his memory had it not been for Tommy’s wince at his words.

“Then why are you with here? Why are you with…them?” Tommy’s nose wrinkles in a way that Newt distinctly remembers finding very cute. He cannot, however, remember where or when he decided it was cute. 

Newt looks over his shoulder before looking back at Tommy, shuddering involuntarily. “It comes and goes, man. I can’t explain it. Sometimes I can’t control myself, barely know what I’m doing,” he says. Something inside of him tells him he isn’t answering quite the right question. “But usually it’s just like an itch in my brain, throwing everything off-kilter just enough to bother me—make me angry.” 

s _ometimes it burns me too_

_burns me alive then freezes me up_

_it feels good but you make it feel better_

“You seem fine right now,” Tommy says. 

Newt almost laughs. He most definitely is not fine. At best he is calm, calm until Tommy begins to ask him to come with him again. And then he shoots past calm and fine and composed and irritated so fast and launches straight into infuriated like a slingshot. “Just shut up, you shuck traitor! Didn’t you read my note?” _You promised me,_ Newt sobs from where no one can hear him. _You promised me._

His mind fades in and out, sometimes letting him see and other times blinding him with spots of black. Sometimes he hears what he is screaming and sometimes he can only hope it isn’t as bad as he knows it is. The one thing he _does_ hear is: “I hate you, Tommy! I hate you, I hate you, _I hate you!_ ”

The threshold of truth and lies blurs until it’s a gray line and Newt can’t figure out where it lies anymore. He loved Tommy but he hated him too; he trusted Tommy but wanted him dead. And he doesn’t know what he wants now, but whatever it is, it’s better than what he presently has.

Tommy is begging with everything he’s got. “Give me a chance,” he implores, and that’s all he needs.

A shriek so inhuman and foreign that Newt wonders if it really came from him cleaves into the air as he lunges forward, wrapping his arms around Tommy and throwing his body into him to knock him to the ground. The sharp sizzle of electricity rips over him but he doesn’t have time to wonder where it came from. He can taste blood in his mouth and smell the fire licking over his skin even though he cannot see it. He has a fever, he’s sick, he’s dying so fast and he doesn’t know _why it hasn’t happened yet._ The dizziness is unbearable and yet Newt unrelentingly plows right through it.

“I should rip your eyes out. Teach you a lesson in stupidity.” Newt grabs Tommy’s shoulders and wrestles them to the ground, pinning his body underneath him. A faint sense of déjà vu passes over him and he has to blink it away. He’s scared of what he might remember and he’s scared to even think for a second that once upon a time, in a distant timeline, they had done this before under more amiable circumstances. More wonderful circumstances. It feels so familiar and different all at once. Maybe Tommy remembers; maybe that’s why he’s here. “Why’d you come over here? You expected a bloody hug? Huh? A nice sit-down to talk about the good times in the Glade?” 

An vacancy more horrifying than the ruthless fire behind his eyes commands silence through his body. Newt has the sudden urge to come clean and confess anything, _everything_  to Tommy before he does something bad. He tries to tell Tommy about how he feels but the Flare still has influence over his tongue. It sits like lead in his mouth and finally Newt decides to tell him something else, something the Flare will allow him to say: “You wanna know why I have this limp, Tommy? Did I ever tell you? No, I don’t think I did.”

Tommy's hand is moving, reaching down, and Newt almost looks but the boy’s magnificent voice distracts him. “What happened?”

Newt hesitates just a second before baring his very soul. “I tried to kill myself in the Maze. Climbed halfway up one of those bloody walls and jumped right off,” he says, his last word shortened by a chuckle packed with madness that jumps from his lips. “Alby found me and dragged me back to the Glade right before the Doors closed.”

Admitting his suicide attempt feels like nails being hammered into his temples, but slowly it transforms into a sensation of calm as if he was releasing a heavy burden. So he keeps going—his ultimate fatal mistake.

“I hated the place, Tommy,” Newt laughs without a pinch of humor. “I hated every second of every day.” A phantom hand grabs his consciousness and hauls it deep, deep, deep down into the farthest recesses of his head and Newt almost screams, but he no longer has control. Not even enough to cry.

“And it was _all_

_your_

_fault!_ ”  


The next thing he knows, his nails are digging into Tommy’s wrist and the younger boy is groaning in pain. There’s something cold and metallic pressed against his forehead, and it takes Newt a second to realize it’s a gun. It doesn’t scare him, though—in fact, it does quite the opposite. It exhilarates him and provides one last source of promise. That maybe, just maybe, Tommy can come through after all. That he truly can be the savior Newt had trusted him to be because he _loves_ him and it’s all he wants in the end. It’s what he wanted from the start, and he discovers that the only reason he had forgotten about it was because Tommy had showed up. Tommy showed up and flipped his life on its head and made it worth living. 

Now he has to make it worth dying for.

“Now make amends!” Newt shouts. He’s trembling, but not with fear. “Kill me before I become one of those cannibal monsters! Kill me! I trusted you with the note! No one else. Now do it!”

That’s the closest he can possibly get to telling Tommy he loves him in this situation. That rather than Minho, his oldest and closest friend whom he has known ever since he could remember, he chose _Tommy._ The boy who killed them all a long time ago. The boy who betrayed them. The boy who stole Newt’s heart against all odds and has it in his hand 

right 

now.

“I can’t, Newt,” Tommy whispers, “I can’t.”

Newt grits his teeth and pushes the gun even harder against his forehead. There’s no way he’ll survive if Tommy pulls the trigger. Tommy can’t let go, either—Newt is holding his hand against the handle, keeping his fingers in place. “Make amends! Repent for what you did!” He gulps for breath and drops into an urgent, beseeching whisper. “Kill me, you shuck coward,” Newt begs. “Prove you can do the right thing. Put me out of my misery.”

“Newt, maybe we can—”

“Shut up!” Newt roars. Now, finally, he is crying one last time. “Just shut up! I _trusted_ _you!_ Now do it!”

“I can’t.”  


“Do it!”  


“I can’t!”

Newt can feel Tommy shaking between his legs, straining with all his might to get the gun away from Newt’s head. In a final desperate move he offers an incentive to at least try and ease the boy’s horror. “Kill me or I’ll kill you.” It’s the best he can do. “Kill me! Do it!”

“Newt…” His name is like a holy prayer, the way Tommy whispers it. Newt seizes that sound and hides it in his heart, treasuring it, swearing he will never forget it in whatever life comes after this horrid one. He had longed to hear Tommy say his name like that and his only regret will be that it couldn’t be sooner. 

He cries even harder. “Do it before I become one of them!”

Tommy searches for words, begins to cry silently too. “I…”

“KILL ME!”

With those two words, the ice is gone. He is warm, he is on fire, but for once, it is peaceful. He’s on fire for Tommy, like he’s always been. The boy’s touch sparks a blaze on his skin, seeping into his body and into his head. There, the warmth from Tommy fights the inferno from the Flare, consuming it and leaving behind a hearth that Newt can crawl into and lay his head as the flames swallow his body. This is where he wants to die, at Tommy’s hand. And what an ending it will be.

His voice is soft and gentle, and in these precious moments it is all his own. Newt stares deep into Tommy’s eyes, finding his solace there and relishing the past he travels into as he whispers, 

“Please, Tommy. Please.”

His eyes follow one of Tommy’s tears over his cheek, into his chapped lips. Those lips that he doesn’t remember if he has kissed before. 

And he smiles.

There’s a click before there is the clap of thunder that Newt barely hears because everything is black and quiet and. Warm.

The hearth goes dark.

 

 

_END_

**Author's Note:**

> I did it again and may I just say: 
> 
> I'm really not ready


End file.
